Girl Scouts effectively tap social media engagement

By Robert Wheatley

Social media can be powerful — when deployed effectively. YouTube provides a readily accessible platform where video can engage a broad and diverse audience — but only if it’s done right.

Meaning, the content thus is initially more important than the medium. In the absence of compelling content, social media is just a distribution platform. The viral rubber meets the road when the communication itself is relevant, interesting and thought provoking.

So today we have a living example of “right” from the Girl Scouts.

My seven-year-old daughter Heather is a Daisy this year, the entry-level designation for Girl Scouts to be. And, as you’d expect she’s selling cookies. An recurring metaphor for Girl Scout-dom that seems it’s been institutionalized as an annual right of passage for eons. She came by the agency office recently to tempt the staff with the baked delights. Virtually everyone signed up.

You don’t really think about the value of it other than the surface view that it raises funds for the organization, and you get a tasty treat in return. It’s a fair exchange. But what if you elevate the whole idea to a stronger context. What if you can re-position the perspective on cookie sales to a more meaningful and valuable proposition?

Today Marketing Daily ran a piece about the Girl Scouts’ effort to reframe the cookie sale program into an emotional call-to-action. It’s about the character-building outcomes of doing this. All housed within a deeper understanding of how the proceeds go to help others.

Watch it here:

It’s a terrific piece of story telling that uses the video medium effectively. Short, consumable, powerful – everything you want in a compelling trip to social media interaction. You watch – THEN decide how many boxes you really want. I dare you.

What do you think?

By Carrie Becker

Robert Mondavi Blazes Consumer Engagement at Chicago Gourmet and Beyond

In the wine world, tasting events are the root of all marketing outreach efforts. The entry to participate alone weighs heavily on both time and cost investments. However, there are not many other ways to replace the experience of swirling, sipping and talking with your consumer one-on-one.

Understanding both the importance and the investment, many brands see just getting to the event as crossing the finish line of consumer engagement. But, if you are not activating your brand presence, someone else is stealing your share-of-voice and your next customer.

One brand that I admire for their successful event execution and consumer engagement is the Robert Mondavi brand of wines. Recently, I enjoyed experiencing their brand at the culinary, wine and spirits consumer event, Chicago Gourmet.

Here’s my run down of what Robert Mondavi did right and how you can take some pointers:

On-site Engagement: Education

Don’t just offer a wine sample. Add some value to the consumer experience and your impression will last beyond the event. Robert Mondavi has a beautifully designed traveling event that emulates their brand identity. Within their space they offer a sensory station to learn about the nuances of different varietals and throughout the event they host-cooking demonstrations and wine 101 classes led by their brand ambassadors.

Credibility Building: Spokesperson Sponsorship

What are the sources you trust for information on wine? Trade magazines, Robert Parker ratings, wine analysts, trend reports? Now, who does your consumer trust? You? Well, maybe your winemaker but sorry he/she needs someone else to give your wine a seal of approval. Robert Mondavi cleverly partnered with well-recognized and credited food and wine writer and culinary TV personality, Ted Allen, to elevate their Private Selection portfolio of wine. As their spokesperson, Ted helps spread the brand message leading up to events with local media appearances, integrates in event content as a seminar speaker and is available for giving consumers some very engaging one-on-one consumer time by attending the event.

Understanding Consumer Interests: Contest Engagement

Contests are a dime a dozen and many times miss hitting the core consumer when not honed in on the passions and interests of the consumer. Tapping into the star power of their relevant spokesperson, Ted Allen, Robert Mondavi asked consumers to submit a wine question to Ted for a chance to meet him for dinner at a high-end restaurant. The entry was simple for a wine enthusiast and it weeded out any professional contest applicants when asking a question relevant to the spokesperson and the brand.

(Full disclosure: I was one of the winners. The experience was memorable and you could not fit a more genuine and authentic group of folks in one room. Here again the experience and reach of the brand went beyond the event especially when contest winners like me blogged about the experience on our food and personal blogs.)

How else can you activate consumer engagement at events? How else should you extend the experience beyond an event space footprint?

My quick answer: applying a social media strategy.

Perhaps Robert Mondavi could employ live blogging or vlogging from the event or reward those who follow them on Facebook or Twitter by receiving an incentive when they visit the booth. This extra layer of engagement builds the conversation and strengthens the bond between consumer and brand.

But more on this for a later post.

If you are interested in some additional insight in how to better connect with your consumer at events and beyond, I’d love the opportunity to chat. I love chatting about wine, food and building consumer relationships. Email me: cbecker@wheatleytimmons.com or find me on Twitter: twitter.com/CarrieBecker7

Commodities can be successfully branded…

By Robert Wheatley

Ok, you can stop laughing now. No really. Yes, this is me. I said stop laughing. Anyone hazard a guess on when??

Try 1977. Hopefully that helps explain the hair and stache combo. For those of you not old enough to get the era, the look actually was fairly typical for a guy of my 25 years at the time. This was my first job in PR after a short stint promoting rock concerts. Rocker boy turned farmer? Hardly. The assignment was for the King County government – surrounding the city of Seattle. I was working on a truly innovative project that eventually helped my boss, John Spellman, get elected Governor of the State of Washington.

This newspaper story was about me and what I was up to – sort of a local boy does good treatment. So here I am, standing in a field in front of a tractor, and yes, this farm is in the city. No I did not grow up on a farm and have never milked a cow.

Preserving Urban Agriculture

Not that I’m necessarily the tree-hugging type, but I really thought this project, in its day, was innovative and certainly precedent setting. I had this idea to put a brand identity (King County Fresh) on local produce, honey, and other agricultural products farmed in the urban environs. The t-shirt I’m wearing, a sort of bright Kelly green with reversed out white graphic showcased the Fresh logo, used on POP materials, product stickers and in transit ads to promote the effort. The goal: help create a stronger economic climate that would help keep urban agriculture viable at a time when farmland was disappearing faster than you can say, “Hey, is that a new shopping mall?”

The public policy concept at the time was revolutionary, only Long Island near New York City was also on the same track – to purchase the development rights to farmland, preserving their agricultural use — thus ensuring a steady flow of fresh products into the local market place.

Brands and Value-Added Meaning

I wanted people to know about and be able to recognize locally grown products. The difference in freshness and taste is remarkable. And our research suggested that people (voters) wanted to support local farms and help preserve them. So the King County Fresh campaign was novel in its day –intended to imbue some of the emotional values of branding on commodities like lettuce, corn and melons. The end game: consumers could vote with their pocketbooks to select local products stickered with the Fresh logo or merchandised in a retail section with POP material that showcased the identity.

Media got up for this because statistics revealed local farmland was going the way of the parking lot at an alarming rate. Farmers got excited because they felt it was THEIR brand. Supermarket retailers?? Whole other story because their buying systems had to be interrupted to get local products in the warehouse. Local independent markets were all over it.

It took two trips to the well with the voters, but we eventually succeeded in getting a $65 million bond issue passed to finance the development rights acquisition deal. Spellman, a Republican, got a lot of credit for this and voila, off to the Governor’s mansion, and me off to the agency business with Ogilvy & Mather in 1979.

I have never forgotten the great lesson of the moment, that a profound idea can be captured in an image and then used as a rallying platform to build business and secure fans. In this case, to benefit local farmers and eventually get voters behind an initiative that would keep the fresh cucumbers in those wonderful stalls at Seattle’s unique Pike Place Market.

So are apples, apples? Only if you let them be. Can a head of lettuce stoke emotional bonds? Incredibly, yes. Marketing and communication is such a powerful thing. It’s why I get up in the morning excited to jump into the fray.

By Robert Wheatley

The only path to growth in a commoditized world

Tuesday night Barack Obama demonstrated one of the most powerful principles of branding in the new age of saturation: be different. His campaign focus was appropriately simple, defining and memorable – Change We Need. The relevance of it was persuasive not because of its logic and argument but because of its superb reflection of a basic truth. The electorate already believed change is vital and necessary. Obama owns change as a position. Its relevance worked to help marginalize John McCain, who had trouble defining his candidacy beyond his obvious experience and track record.

The fundamental driver of business success today…

We live in an age where technical prowess is fleeting. Where specsmanship has limited currency due to technology’s ability to closely match the formulas and features of one product vs. the other. Excellence is table stakes. So is extraordinary service. Value is important now more than ever but alone it is also a commodity.

Physical distinctions between brands get thin. Therefore habit increasingly plays a role in year-on-year business performance because consumers show a remarkable resistance to apply any brain time to re-think purchase direction if a product fulfills its primary mission. From brand to brand, category-to-category we can dissect products and businesses to reveal a remarkable level of sameness. One airline to another. One pasta sauce to another. One detergent to another. And so on.
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The semi-secret life of PR in brand building…

Reading David Balter’s (founder of Boston-based BzzAgent) interesting and engaging new book, The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II, served as inspiration to take a moment Read More»